1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for converting trees into wood products, and more particularly, to a continuous process for handling, selecting and finishing trees into construction lumber, chips for pulp and other economic wood products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is well known to cut whole trees, delimb them and slash them into predetermined lengths at the tree site or nearby in a woodlands operation before transporting the trees to either a saw mill or a shipping plant for a paper mill. Such conventional woodlands operations, even though they have been highly mechanized and rendered more efficient of late, are still not without disadvantages. The labour and machinery required at the woodlands operation is still relatively expensive. Furthermore, much waste is left at the woodlands site in terms of branches. Furthermore, when the trees are slashed at predetermined lengths at the woodlands site, any selection of length is eliminated since there is little or no response at the woodlands site to the demands in terms of selective length. Further, the handling and transport of varied length logs is relatively more difficult.
In the saw mill operation, it has been found that much labour is required even in today's highly mechanized saw mills, particularly in selecting and sorting areas, and in areas of recycling of a particular log for cutting.
As the logs are fed into the saw mill, they vary considerably in size. These are normally stored and fed through chipping and sawing apparatus, and some attempts have been made to sort out the log sizes before chipping by means of manual scanning and operation of the gate which diverts the logs in at least two sizes, that is, large or small.
Saw mills have been developed whereby a log is cut in series according to a certain log pattern, and shipping heads are used for slabbing or for squaring the log before it is cut but the resulting lumber products, and these would seldom be of the same size from a given log, are then advanced and stored or accumulated together. Obviously, a further step of resorting, either mechanically or manually, is required to sort out the various pieces of lumber and stack the lumber according to size for later packaging and shipping.